Women in Jakarta: family life and family planning.

Interviews with 146 married middle and lower middle class women in Jakarta Indonesia were conducted to examine the effects of age age at marriage employment status education ethnicity and socioeconomic status on fertility. Unemployed women were drawn from womens volunteer associations and employed women were drawn from their employers and occupational associations. All the interviewers were women and it was attempted to match the interviewers to respondents as closely as possible. The mean age of the respondents was just under 37 years. 25% of the sample were Javanese and 1/5 belonged to the closely related Sudanese and the original Jakartans. Chinese and Menadonese women accounted for 37% of the sample. 57% were Muslim and 37% were Protestants. 94% had more than 4 people in the household. Education ranged from incomplete primary school to university training. Age did not significantly affect fertility but education had a strong effect. Employment did not seem to affect fertility strongly. Ethnicity and religion seemed to be associated with the number of children. Age and education seemed to affect the choice of contraceptive used and 37% began using a contraceptive after their first child was born. 5% of the women used contraceptives without their husbands knowledge. One pattern that arose was that most pregnancies occurred in the first year after marriage. Also more employed women than housewives chose "after 40" to be the best age for terminating childbearing. Most women also believed that the husbands earning capacity should determine his limit for fathering children. Interestingly 60% of the women who wanted more children were at least high school graduates. Since family life is very important to Indonesians and since each of the variables examined is inter-related in complex ways to other variables it does not appear possible to explain all the relations to fertility in this study. However it is suggested that an arisan (a womens social and joint savings group) would be ideal for family planning support groups.